#so you all get to tolerate my kichi talk

[spontaneousglitterbees]

Does Kokichi (or any of the others) get a therapy animal? I know that Kokichi has his cane and stuff, but would he ever get a dog to help with the pain when needed along with encouraging him to sleep?

Does Kiyo get a friend to help him through his panic when he overheats?

You've mentioned that Miu basically has to force herself to take breaks so would she get a little assistant to help pull her away to take a rest?

Part of me believes that if they do get one, Ryoma would be the one to arrange it with our beloved Overlord of Ice (or in Kokichi's case, beg for Gundham to help)

[DRV3 TAPP AU Masterpost]

This is just what I needed to help focus some of the ideas I’ve been having so tysm anon:

I love the idea of Ryoma working with Gundham in the animal shed! I have a concept building that there’s a group of students that hang out there and volunteer. In my mind, it’s somewhat of a safe haven from the rowdier activities on campus and almost doubles as a hangout spot for some of the ND students to decompress and form friendships between classes; Peko, Gonta, and Gundham himself are in there a lot, to name a few.

Kokichi does get a cat, but she isn’t a licensed therapy animal. Gundham breeds animals that go into high-profile training programs, but this cat… is not one of them. In fact, as runt of her litter with a chip on her shoulder bigger than her whole head, he was starting to worry she might not even be adoptable. The little beast doesn’t like other cats, only tolerates the affection of her human caretakers before taking off and hiding, and eventually she escapes captivity entirely.

Now, recapturing a housecat can be anywhere from simple as opening the door for them to a complex multi-month scouting, trust-building, and eventually stealth-catnapping mission (provided all goes well). This is not for the faint of heart. The shed crew absolutely does care about her safety, but also can’t chase her all day (and even if they did, she would just be scared further into hiding.)

There is a TDP bonus mode interaction between Gundham and Kokichi where Kichi gets scratched, so I can’t fault anyone for deciding he might not like cats. In another scenario where he’s not actively talking to people, though, I think Kokichi would vibe with the way cats communicate. They’re very particular in their body language regardless of personality, something he’s notoriously good at analyzing in people; they’re creatures of habit that form communities and express their connection and trust of one another through specific behavioral cues.  Eye contact, for instance, is a sign of aggression for cats, and one way to signify you are deliberately not a threat is by going out of your way to blink in their direction and keep your eyes closed a few seconds. Cats will do this at one another and at people. No matter how common the perception of cats as loners, standoffish, and otherwise unfriendly is, they still form colonies that communally hunt and care for kittens. They’ll eat together and occasionally turn their backs to one another to signal good-faith (‘I will not take advantage of you while you’re off-guard’, which can look to some like ‘I am making sure you know I am ignoring you by refusing to look at you’), only flipping onto their backs when fully relaxed and trusting. Cats will show just as much affection as dogs, but it’s occasionally from across the room. They’re social animals. They just also value their independence, and some of their social cues are frequently misinterpreted by people expecting them to be something they are not.

Hmm.

If DICE is anything to go by, I don’t think he’d hesitate to take care of a stray. He sees her once in an alleyway, and leaves some food for her. Even though he doesn’t see her the next, he comes back around the same time and leaves it in a sheltered corner. And the one after that. Even if it hurts to kneel down. She starts to notice the way he winces after several days of his coming around to feed her, and it coaxes her out of her hiding place.

The two establish a rapport pretty quickly. Shuichi will occasionally see Kokichi stuffing something in his pocket or his bag, and is positive he’s scheming. Little does he know, had he actually followed Kokichi, he’d watch him sneak behind one of the science buildings and. Sit on the rickety fire stairs, pull out a few colorful feathers, and play with a lonely kitten. Diabolical.

Of course, once Ouma sees the posters the shed crew have put up around the area, he’s immediately conflicted. Someone is out there looking for her (she has people who care about her). She’s let you pet her, but if you disrespect her space and scoop her up who knows what she’ll do (your continued silence keeps her apart from the people, who are real and really out there and demonstrably looking for her, who care about her.) The responsible thing to do is to betray her trust for her own good.

… Tomorrow.

He’ll. He’ll turn her in tomorrow.

When he gets caught, he hands her over before he can look back.

The shy, moody beast hasn’t stopped meowing at every person she’s seen since. She practically hovers around Gonta, who feels a bit guilty he has no idea what she needs. They’ve checked her a few times over; she’s surprisingly healthy despite foraging and forging ahead on her own for so long and thankfully uninjured by the whole incident (if isolated from the other cats for a while just in case, which she hardly minds.) It’s a mystery.

At least, it’s a mystery until there’s an event on campus, and the one-two punch of loud noise and crowding turn huge chunks of campus into active minefields. As much as Kokichi loves bothering his friends, maybe eavesdropping while he’s at it, he just. Cannot handle something like this, anymore. What might have been exciting is totally overstimulating, and he can’t deny that the heat of both the season and the sheer volume of Humanity bunched together is making his symptoms a hell of a lot harder to deal with, let alone hide. The animal shed is a convenient place for him to split off and pick his way into so that, hopefully, he doesn’t actually faint. Hopefully. (Skilled as he is, he can’t hear the pins of the lock over the sound of his own heartbeat, but, thankfully, someone comes and opens the door anyway from the inside.)

Little did he know, but there’s already a small party’s worth of students in the shed also looking to either get away from the crowds, make sure the animals aren’t panicked by all the noise outside, or both. And there’s climate control in here. So Kokichi is Not Going Anywhere. There are plenty of questions, sure, but it hardly looks like a good time for him to answer them; he does, though, answer a completely different line of questioning when the kitty notices Kokichi and immediately nuzzles into his chest.

Gundham is pretty sure it’s illegal to separate them now.

Her name is Bishop, as in “overseer”. Kokichi needs someone to talk at who won’t analyze everything he says, and wax Rantaro isn’t exactly available. More importantly, it’s the third most powerful chess piece: after the King and his s/o, of course. Plus, when she’s surprised the way her fur stands up reminds him of a certain Ultimate Robot; he’s looking forward to telling Kiibo he named his cat assistant “after a competent AI,” the android from Aliens. (Double-plus, I think the scene in that movie where Bishop does the knife trick could be where Kokichi got it from for the FTEs, as a fun little full-circle moment).

Bishop is an emotional support animal. She isn’t trained like a therapy animal, nor has she gone through a rigorous certification and become a medically necessary service animal. She more just… lives in his room, even before he does any of the paperwork to have an ESA in the dorms. That’s not to say she isn’t helpful-- having her around puts him in a better spot than he’d be in otherwise for certain, but she usually stays in Kokichi’s room.

That said, I think she does kind of get to know when he needs her through experience, and on at least one occasion is clever enough to figure out when something’s wrong and he needs someone else (probably Kaito). I think after TAPP tried simulating the poisoning/some degree of nerve damage in him for long enough, it cascaded into an abnormal autoimmune response that's just kept going. It mostly messes with the way his nerves connect to his muscles, leading to things like intermittent weakness, feeling like you’re going to faint even if you don’t fully lose consciousness (presyncope), and having your heart race when you sit or stand up (orthostatic intolerance). Kokichi, hating to admit even to himself when a situation is thoroughly out of his control, will probably not leave his dorm to get someone, if nothing else, to hang out and help him feel slightly less terrified (of dying alone, naturally, even if it only feels that way). Bishop might. 

Seems she's always there when he needs her most.

I honestly hadn’t thought about therapy animals for Miu and Kiyo before, and I think I’m going to have to give it more thought. For reasons I haven’t isolated I just… also want to give them cats? Especially Kiyo, who might also appreciate the way they set up and maintain boundaries with people and each other without caring about them any less.

Miu can hardly pry herself away from her work long enough to take care of herself, let alone another living thing, so she might start with a potted succulent for the lab while she’s working on Kiibo. Once he’s corporeal, he’ll probably be the best at convincing her to step away from things (and consequently stop using projects to avoid actually dealing with her feelings) and possibly get an animal of her own. For now, Kokichi’s trying (not always succeeding) to take that role (for her sake, and also to convince himself he can trust her to be half as vulnerable around him as he feels all the time).

Kiyo also withdraws into studying, but it’s less to distract himself and more that he doesn’t fully trust himself around other people (or, admit it to himself or not, other people around him). He needs a therapy animal that’ll get him out of his own head from time to time. More of a calming presence than an energizing one, and one that won’t wreck the shelves of souvenirs and knick-knacks in his room at that. Some cats might love to knock things over, but others could not care less; all depends on the individual, of course.

More a shitpost than an answer, but I did have the thought ‘what if, rather than there being multiple cats, Bishop sneaks out on occasion when Kokichi’s not there.’

None of them have spoken about their occasional Encounters with a mischievous kitten to one another in detail, and if its brought up in passing they all call her something different. Absolutely nobody is surprised when the cat-loose-in-the-dormitory wanders over to Kokichi’s room.

… Except for Kokichi, who did not know she sneaks her way out through a crack in the wall on a semi-regular basis. By the time he gets back, she’s always sitting prim and looking at the door to greet him. He shouldn’t be surprised, though. They only met because of her history of Houdini-ing out of the animal shed, after all. Bishop will not be Contained.

Something about pets being like their Chosen Person, I suppose.

[marks-rambles]

IM SORYY FOR SPAM POSTING ABOUT GRAPE MAN BTU IM JUST VERY EXCITED FOR WHEN THE PARENTS GO TO BED SO I CAN PLAY V3 WITHOUT BEING JUDGED FOR MIU'S... WAYS OF SPEECH

[morkaischosen]

Sage and Joan Gardener

Some More CMWGE Characters

The original idea here came from Wounded Angel, and the idea of doing mirror-image versions of the same character, where each was the other’s sealed-away Blasphemy monster form. Then I decided the version that’s slightly truer to the Nobilis half of the inspiration was better. I’m pretty sure wanting to use Prophet wasn’t even the main reason for that!

(Sage is, as you will likely notice, using standard-issue Fallen Angel arcs, while Joan is on the canonical Angel arcset, yes shut up Prophet is definitely an Angel arc and you can’t convince me otherwise.)

Sage Gardener, the Friend to All Weeds, is a foundling of mysterious parentage. He was raised by the Kichi family, whose sacred pools long ago prophesied his arrival; sealed away within him, the prophecy says, is an apocalypse of fire and brimstone that will bring ruin and destruction to the world. The only way to avert this doom is for him to live a peaceful, compassionate life; if he gives in to anger, the terrible forces he contains will escape into the world.

If anyone can raise him and keep him safe from that fate, it’s Fortitude’s shrine families - but adolescence will test even their tranquility.

Sage is a small, slight boy with a shaved head and a smile that ranges from calm to cheeky, depending on his mood - he almost never frowns. He has a kind word for absolutely everyone he meets; in Fortitude that’s not particularly surprising, but he shows the same polite respect to rampaging abominations of science, monsters, and even door-to-door salespeople.

The grass stains on his knees and the scratches on his hands somehow entirely fail to make him look messy - they seem as much a part of him as his clothes and skin.

Sage is one of those people who can have a conversation about anything someone finds interesting, but his personal passion is botany. He tends a small wildflower meadow not far from the Kichi shrine, full of plants most of his neighbours think of as weeds - Sage maintains that everyone else not wanting them in their gardens just means it’s even more important to make space for them here, and sometimes even transplants weeds to make sure they have somewhere to grow. He’s so used to the thorns, thistles and stings that he sometimes forgets to warn people, which can be a problem when he invites people to sit with him in the garden - it’s not that they don’t hurt him, it’s just part of life.

His unshakeable calm is starting to shake as puberty makes itself known, though. He’s starting to find his mood swinging more than he’s used to, particularly when people are judgemental towards those they don’t understand - he can’t stand that kind of behaviour, but it’s so much easier to be angry about it than anything else. He’s managed to keep it under control for now - despite a few forlorn patches of fresh ash in his garden - but he’s scared of what could happen if he’s not as good at that as his (consistently supportive) foster-parents and teachers think, and too worried about upsetting them to bring it up.

Sage Gardener, the Friend to All Weeds

Superior Holiness 2 (but Sage’s Holiness is entirely unsuited to scourging anything - he can heal people, inspire them, and calm wild animals with a word, but ghosts and monsters can tolerate his presence just fine.) Kindness 2 Meditation 1 Botany 3

If Joan also exists, Sage should have a Connection 1 to her, even if they’ve never met.

Wounded Angel 2:

Dramatic: Sage tends to turn up when people really need someone to talk to - as often for “ohmygod I just read this book and it’s AMAZING” as anything else.

Devices: herbal infusions and incenses with mystical properties, efficaciously channeling his Holiness.

Blasphemy: when Sage loses his last Divine Health Level, he flowers into a terrible mandala of fire, wings, and lidless eyes that scourges away all spiritually impure things - and most things are spiritually impure.

Empowered Wounds: handles everything from holy powers of peace and love through the corrupt powers of a malevolent spirit possessing him (because malevolent possessing spirits deserve somewhere to live!) to manifestations of the terrible doom of scourging flame he could become.

Creature of the Light 1:

Tireless: Sage has access to Miraculous Will while showing compassion and acceptance to the things others reject.

Well-Lit: Sage is a blessed and holy being, and the world shows him to the best of its ability.

The Auctoritas Magister

Appear: Plants often turn out to have been Sage (or have had a Sage sleeping underneath them) when he needs to be where they are.

Transfix: Sage’s calm motions hold people’s attention, bringing peace to the world.

Possible starting Empowered Wounds include nettle stings that mark him as a friend to weeds, allowing him to manipulate plant life and giving an Affliction of “My skin stings like a nettle,” as well as barely-controlled mood swings allowing him to summon fire, with some appropriate Affliction.

Perks: Affliction: “When I give in to anger, things burn.” (Tied to Wounded Angel - currently 2)

“It’s like a home to me” - Sage’s wildflower meadow gives a +1 Tool bonus to feeling at peace.

XP Emotion: Believing In You XP or D’awww XP are the two I’d be likely to hit.

Joan Gardener, the Foe to All Weeds, is a foundling orphan. Her adoptive family are a quiet Fortitude couple who’d already been looking to adopt when she was found, a baby, on their doorstep with a cryptic note explaining that young Joan Gardener needed a home. As she grew older, it started to become clear that she might not be an entirely normal child - nothing that would be that obvious on its own, but the coincidences are piling up.

Joan is a stocky girl with shoulder-length mousy hair, often tied up in a slightly messy ponytail. She spends a lot of time frowning, either in concentration or because someone’s said something she disagrees with - she’s a wilful sort, and her teachers very rapidly learned that it’s difficult to satisfy her with a partial explanation. She’s willing to back down if you can actually convince her she was wrong, but doing that isn’t easy.

She’s fond of most forms of art - a beautiful painting or a well-performed song always replaces her trademark frown of concentration with a surprisingly sweet smile - but she decided at an early age that her true love is gardening. As always, she committed, and every day when her lessons are done, she armours herself in her apron and her gloves, belts on her secateurs and the weed-killing blowtorch nobody will admit to having let a child get hold of, and sets forth to earn some pocket money. Her campaign against weeds is legendary - she fights them with zealous efficiency, often insisting on staying out late if the root system is more extensive than expected.

She’s often frustrated by grown-ups not believing her, especially when she can’t explain why she needs to do something; as puberty starts to make itself known, her parents are finding themselves at odds with her more often. She’s a good kid and she doesn’t like being disobedient, but more and more often, the alternative seems just as bad. It’s frustrating and confusing for everyone, but as ever the idea of backing down is far from her thoughts.

Joan Gardener, the Foe to All Weeds

Superior Holiness 2 (but Joan’s holiness is harsh-edged - she can inspire people, cure infections or drive back a ghost with a word, but when it comes to encouraging growth she’s better off using good compost and the right fertiliser.) Confidence 2 Making an Effort 1 Gardening 3 Flying 0 (she can jump about as effectively as a normal child who jumps a fairly normal amount but has no particular investment in this mode of transportation).

If Sage exists, Joan should have Connection 1 to him, even if they’ve never met.

Prophet 2:

Joan is the Prophet of Pruning, the cosmic principle of carefully cutting away imperfect or unwanted things to allow space for beauty to grow. It’s most deeply tied to gardening, but it can also be found in surgery and the like. Her enemies include Sage (whose message of acceptance refuses to allow the destructive side of pruning); other foes might be an industrial interest representing Productivity - where Pruning cuts away some stems of the bush to promote more flowers to grow, Productivity uproots the whole bush so it can build a factory.

Divine Guidance: Joan can allow the cosmic weight of Pruning to guide her towards what needs to be removed. If she sustains this for a whole chapter, some broader-scale beauty is given space to flower into the world.

Materialization of Possibility: Joan can call on Pruning to solve an immediate problem - coincidence and chance conspire to cut through the Gordian knot, or doubts and confusion are removed to make a chaotic mess suddenly simple and clear. Pruning is reductive - it’s well suited to removing obstacles and bringing clarity, but less adept at creating new things.

Inspiration: When performing the work of Pruning, Joan can escape the bonds of gravity to find the best angle to work from, using the Flight of Pruning; and her actions take on divine force, cutting through obstruction and indecision and removing her audience’s doubts when she moves and speaks with the Confidence of Pruning.

Vestments: Joan has a weed-killing blowtorch of flame. Nobody’s quite sure who let a 12-year-old girl get her hands on something that dangerous, but it’s definitely hers and taking it off her seems like a bad idea. The “of flame” seems a bit redundant, but omitting it feels like abbreviating the thing’s proper name. With this mighty weapon, Joan can burn weeds and purify away all manner of malign presences.

Hallow: given a few minutes to work, Joan can prepare a place for Pruning. This enshrines the region property that “Impure and unwanted things can be cut away to give beauty space to grow.”

Illumination: It can be hard to cut away the things that hold you back; when Joan listens to people’s struggles with what it means to give themselves the space to grow, it can be Foreshadowing or Sympathetic Action.

Keeper of Gardens 1:

The World, Like Clay: Joan Gardener is a gardener and Keeper of Gardens, and thus can garden her gardens with her Gardening skill. But, like, more than normal gardeners can.

Toxic: Joan has a Bond 2: “I make everything simple and straightforward.” Her confidence is infectious.

Land-Rule: The rules allow shifting some points into Superior Land-Rule, but I feel like the things of Joan’s gardens likely respond to Confidence and Holiness well enough that it’s not necessary.

The Great Magic: By wounding a Divine Health Level, Joan can shape the way her gardens grow, allowing them to develop into ever more beautiful forms.

Guide: Talking flowerbeds and sentient water features are possible, but - unsurprisingly - Joan’s most common Guides are created as topiary.

Perks: “It’s like a home to me” - Joan’s parents have let her take over the gardening at home, and the results are elegantly beautiful. (Both Prophet and Keeper of Gardens will allow her to claim more gardens in future).

The other perk slot is flexible if you have a good idea; if not, a second Bond: “I must eradicate weeds wherever they may be found!” should lead to Fun.

XP Emotion: Believing In You XP or Fist-Pump XP?

(If you’re running a martial arts version of CMWGE where everything is inexplicably bound up in martial arts tournaments, Sage is a student of baguazhang, true to his Airbender inspiration; Joan insists that European longsword styles are entirely valid martial arts and shows up in full armour.)